Landfills Closed During 1960s Create Hazardous, Toxic Legacy

Mike Wert saw it all go into the lake that served as Hollywood`s public dump in the 1950s and `60s -- toxic incinerator ash, household garbage, anything and everything.

At the time, he and other city garbage workers didn`t think they were doing anything wrong. In fact, they didn`t think about it much at all.

``Back then, dumps weren`t regulated,`` said Wert, who has worked in the city`s sanitation department for 33 years. ``Back then, we didn`t think the environment was very important.``

Back then, places such as Ray`s T-Pit and the Curcie Brothers Dump opened their gates to just about anything people had to unload.

Today, decades after most of these dumps were shut down, their legacy lingers.

When it rains, water percolates through at least 41 long-abandoned dumps scattered across Broward County, brewing a potentially toxic tea of heavy metals and, in some cases, deadly chemicals.

Beneath the sites, pools of poison settle in the Biscayne Aquifer, South Florida`s underground water supply, threatening to become a pollution problem for future generations.

``It might spell problems in the future,`` said Bill Cooper, director of the Drinking Water Research Center at Florida International University. ``The metals don`t disappear, and we`ve got a highly permeable aquifer. It`s like a pipeline under there.``

Broward`s abandoned dumps stretch north and south along Interstate 95, east to the Intracoastal Waterway and west nearly to the edge of the Everglades. Many have been paved over with the foundations for hotels, auto showrooms and elementary schools.

Understaffed and overworked, the state Department of Environmental Regulation has kept track of only about 13 abandoned dumps in Broward, say files in the agency`s West Palm Beach office, a small bureau that covers the region from Okeechobee County to Dade.

``Obviously, we have some concerns about them, but as far as the ability of our staff to address everything ... it`s very difficult,`` said Thomas Sirna, a DER environmental specialist.

``I was the only groundwater person for two years. We`re talking six counties with 3 million people. If something was a major, major problem, it would probably show up eventually.``

Some problems already have.

-- Cancer-causing vinyl chloride seeped into one of Fort Lauderdale`s two public wellfields and poisoned the wells that seven nearby families used to draw their drinking water. -- Beneath the massive Silver Lakes development in western Pembroke Pines, where welcome signs beckon buyers to live ``At Home with Nature,`` tests conducted this year showed levels of lead in the groundwater that violated drinking water standards. During the 1960s, in the northeast corner of Silver Lakes, the Curcie Brothers Dump took the garbage of most south Broward cities. Now developers want to build a park on the site.

In recent years, DER records show pollutants have been detected in soil and water near a host of other dump sites: vinyl chloride and 1,2-Dichloroethane in Coral Springs; chromium, lead and selenium in Pompano Beach; 1,1,1- Trichloroethane in Deerfield Beach. These chemicals have been linked to cancer, liver and kidney damage, and birth defects.

DER and Environmental Protection Agency officials said the problem may not be so bad. In general, a polluted site will not pose immediate danger or warrant a cleanup order unless it is near private or public wells, said Joe McGarrity, a planner in DER`s Superfund site screening office.

``You have to prioritize,`` McGarrity said. ``What`s more important: Clean drinking water or clean groundwater? Obviously, clean drinking water is. You want to keep all the groundwater clean but ... if you only have five inspectors, where are you going to start?``

Officials have decided that contamination at two old Broward landfills was bad enough to warrant cleanup orders.

Both sites, the sludge lagoon at the county landfill in Davie and the old Fort Lauderdale incinerator at 1300 NW 31st Ave. made the federal Superfund list of the nation`s most polluted toxic waste sites.

The Fort Lauderdale incinerator burned from 1955 through 1978 on the east side of Wingate Road, or 31st Avenue. Its furnaces could handle 450 tons daily, but that wasn`t enough to keep up with the city`s burgeoning population and mounting heaps of garbage.

So city workers started burning big piles of garbage on the ground, blanketing nearby homes with a sooty cloud.

In 1985, seven years after the Wingate incinerator took its last load, EPA investigators found pesticides, including DDT, in the soil and water around the 61-acre site.

EPA and Fort Lauderdale officials are beginning to map out a cleanup plan that is expected to cost at least $15 million.

Last year in Davie, federal and county officials finished a $2.1 million cleanup at the county landfill`s sludge lagoon, a pit of grease and sludge from septic tanks and sewage plants.

Vinyl chloride, thought to have seeped from the landfill, poisoned nine wells in the nearby Sunshine Ranches neighborhood.

While the lagoon earned the site Superfund status, county officials have much more work to do to ensure that the 210-acre landfill is safe for the environment.